Everything is medicine - New Moon Practice
- 23 hours ago
- 8 min read
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Welcome to the Wild Wisdom Monthly Practice.
Each New Moon, you are invited into a monthly practice designed to support your spiritual life in a grounded, lived way. These practices draw on the rhythms of the Earth and the cycles of the Moon, offering reflection and simple ritual you can return to throughout the lunar month. They are created to help you stay steady and in relationship with your inner wisdom as life unfolds.
Our practice is Everything in the world is medicine
Our prayer is:
I heal myself
With the light of the sun
And the rays of the moon
I heal myself with the sound of the river
And the water
With the swaying of the sea
And the fluttering of birds
I heal myself
With beauty and love
I am the medicine.
Inspired by María Sabina
The way of medicine
Medicine is a sacred and personal journey.
It’s not just something we might take — it is a relationship we enter into.
It includes insight, story, and presence — anything that restores balance and strengthens our connection to our inner world and the web of life.
Dreams are powerful medicine that point the way.
Sometimes we find ourselves on a path we did not choose.
I found myself on such a path, far from home — and it was my dreams that guided me.
I’m sharing one of three dreams that came in sequence, shifting my perception of everything I was experiencing.
I was sitting in a cafe beside a dark man. And he said to me, “I’m going surfing in the Aire Valley.” I looked at him, and said, “I live in the Aire Valley.” And he said, “I know.”
And he held out his hand.
As I took it, we were suddenly in Bali, in an ancient temple, and he was dressed as a traditional healer. I was up above in one of the caves and a woman came with a huge bag of clothes and offered them to me. I knew none of them would fit.
I said, “Give them to those who need them.”
And in that moment I realised that I, too, was dressed as a traditional healer.
And then the dark man came to me and he said, “Michelle, to be the holy woman, you’ve got to believe.”
Running down the road, feeling scared, alone, and crying. This was my healing moment each evening, a ritual of release. Of seeking my connection with the living world.
I’d had to leave home. Travel far away from my loved ones, to receive the medicine I needed. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. When I said goodbye to my family at the airport, I didn’t know if I would ever see them again.
I stayed at a place that is my home away from home. An ancestral place.
I had to commute to hospital — a day’s travel by buses and plane.
But I knew that part of the medicine was to stay in a landscape where I felt a sense of belonging. Of community and safety.
Every evening I would run along the road overlooking the wild Atlantic Ocean. As the time grew closer to starting the treatment — the modern medicine that I knew I needed — I began to have vivid dreams. Potent, terrifying and yet strangely comforting dreams.
As I ran along the narrow winding road the evening after that dream, with tears streaming down my face, I felt consumed by sorrow and loss, but in that moment I remembered words from my dream the night before.
“Michelle, to be the holy woman you’ve got to believe.”
I spontaneously started to chant them.
I repeated those words over like a mantra, feeling myself growing stronger, but still connected to the deep, emotional grief I felt being separated from my loved ones.
I reached my special place where I would always stop and look out across the wild Atlantic, and say my healing mantra.
“I release you with love and gratitude,” and I would name what was wrong.
And
“I receive you with love and gratitude,” and I would name the medicine.
And a power grew within me, as I said all these words, these wisdom codes. They took root, and cultivated my belief, my trust and faith in my process, that this was not the end. That I would overcome this situation, and I would heal.
The power of dreams, when we pay attention to them, is that they guide us.
Understanding that everything in the world is medicine is a way of life.
When you recognise and appreciate the medicine that the natural world offers, you deepen your connection to your inner healer and your sense of peace and contentment, nourishing a greater understanding of your interconnectedness with all living things.
It is a sacred and personal journey — a loving journey that brings body, mind and spirit back into relationship with the rest of nature. All things are interconnected—land, spirit, ancestor, and person. It isn’t just about curing physical illness, but encompasses everything that maintains spiritual balance, promotes healing, and fosters connection to the earth.
To understand medicine as a way of life involves recognising the sacred in everything, fostering virtues such as simplicity, kindness, compassion and patience and understanding our place within the whole Earth system — or spiritual ecology. All aspects of life — joy and pain, nature, community, and even difficult challenges — act as healing agents or “medicine” for the spirit and body, offering opportunities for learning, growth, and transformation.
Ancient wisdom traditions recognise this truth, and it is embedded in their belief systems and practices.
In the Taoist tradition, healing is not something we force or fix, but something we come into alignment with. A return to the natural flow of life.
To live this way is to relax, to release fixed ideas, and to trust the natural intelligence that exists in all life. Following the ever-unfolding rhythm of life.
This is the essence of Wu Wei — effortless action, where we move with life rather than against it.
Simplicity, patience, and compassion become our guiding virtues. A way of being that steadies us, opens us, and brings us back into right relationship with ourselves and the world. In this tradition they are known as the three treasures.
We learn that true strength lies not in force, but in flexibility — in yielding like water, in listening, in allowing, in being.
And in this way, we return to the source — to a deeper sense of peace, clarity, and belonging.
To meet life as it is, in each moment, becomes the medicine.
From a Wild Wisdom perspective, the understanding that everything in the world is medicine arises from a way of seeing that recognises all of life as alive, relational, and purposeful. Rather than separating healing from daily experience, we come to see every encounter—whether with the natural world, other people, or the inner landscape—as part of an ongoing dialogue with the spirit of life itself.
Illness, challenge, and disruption are not seen as problems to be eliminated, but as signals or initiations that invite our attention and lead to realignment and transformation. In this way, “medicine” is not limited to plants or remedies, but includes insight, relationship, story, and presence—anything that restores balance and strengthens our connection to the web of life. Through practices such as inner journeying, working with spirit allies and ancestor guides, and cultivating a direct relationship with land and cosmos, we begin to perceive more deeply, and meet difficulty as part of the medicine.
And in this way, we also deepen our relationship with the unseen world.
The Otherworld, known by various names in different cultures, and in the modern world as the Spirit World or the Underworld — is a realm that is part of life on Earth, not separate, and contains strong medicine that is accessible to us all, especially through our spirit allies, our Ancestor guides, our dreams, the art of communing, and the unseen forces we can connect to through our spiritual practices.
Humans have lived within this knowledge throughout time.
Honouring our ancestors and the spirits of the land, communing with plant spirits and cultivating their medicines, tending the growth of our food — local, seasonal and overall deepening our interconnection with the ecosystem we live within.
When we begin to recognise the medicine in all that we experience, we move into a different relationship with life.
Many of our practices have explored this way of medicine — from Kin, to The Magic and Mystery of the Night, to The Rhythm of Life.
Keys within these practices strengthen our trust and faith in our life processes, enabling us to embrace and grow our spiritual gifts, and to continue to develop our own unique relationship with the Divine.
They cultivate the inner strength that allows us to shift our perspective and perception of our lives — becoming true spiritual Wayfinders, navigating the journey of life through our own inner guidance and sense of belonging.
We are all part of the great spiritual web of life.
All interconnected and interdependent.
THE PRACTICE
The Three Treasures
We live inside the cycles of life — we are nature, not separate.
True medicine tends body, mind and spirit.
Our practice this month is to create a strong container — one that supports our inner healer and overall well being.
Simplicity, patience, and compassion are guiding virtues — often called the “Three Treasures” in Taoist tradition.
They offer a compass for how we navigate life.
A way of softening, listening, and grounding in what makes us feel alive.
Together, they support and protect our inner world, opening our perception and strengthening our capacity to trust our inner guidance.
Choose one of these treasures at a time.
Spend an hour, a day, or a week with it.
Meditate on it.
Sit with it.
Notice what arises.
Where does it already live within you?
Where do you resist its flow?
How is it medicine for you?
As you move through your time with this treasure, find something that is meaningful to you that represents it.
A stone, a feather, a shell.
Carry it with you — in your pocket or your purse — throughout the time you are with this virtue.
Let it help you focus on and meet the essence of this treasure.
You may wish to journal about your experience.
Find a prayer or poem that expresses it.
Let it speak to you in your own language.
Be devoted to it for the time you are with it.
When you feel complete, place the object you have been carrying on your altar.
A way of honouring it, and of being reminded of it as you move through this practice.
Then move to the next treasure.
Your Own Three Treasures
Once you have spent time with the treasures of simplicity, patience and compassion, reflect on the virtues you value most.
Discover your own three treasures.
Things that cannot be taken from you — because they are true to you.
Expressions of how you want to be in the world.
You might already know what they are, or you may discover them through reflection, meditation, or through the signs and synchronicities that you meet along the way.
As with the other three treasures, find a stone, feather, shell, or other natural objects that represents each one as you spend time with it.
When you are complete, honour these three personal treasures on your altar.
Place your found objects there, light candles for them, read your prayer or poem, and find your own unique way of celebrating them.
With love
